Mornings at the Garden Loft of 5

I have to admit, every day when I get to our office, I try to find a place in my mind where I can be quiet and write (to you).

But when I see the things I have to do, or have not done from yesterday, I sink into my goody good shoes and decide to scratch off the things that must be done over the things I want to do. That is every day. I'm not complaining,  because I like my job. It doesn't feel purposeful, and the creativity it requires is thin. It's fun to work where I work, people are cool, relaxed, on the go, and young (not literally, entirely). But I don't forget that I'd like to

Talk to you
Have daing salad with you
Marathon with you (not exercise)
Hug cats with you
Pass notes
With you

When I'm in my commute, quiet mostly, I wonder if I still have a page in your book. I miss how you write my initials like a tattoo, only better, because it isn't painful, just ticklish.

Yeah, the first time I saw my name on your page I imagined how it must be kakakiliti, then kilig.

Reasons and Excuses

Between thought and action is reason. When we lose it, forget it, or worse completely neglect its value, we become animals imprisoned by our own self-serving missions rooted on an irrational culture set to stone by protruded impulse.

Few days ago I left my email open on Y's laptop. She accidentally opened it and saw an ex's name. This prompted her to read the exchange, or at least open what it started with. It was an email I sent with a poem in it. A poem I wrote in trance while my life is in transit, so to speak. The issue for Y was: why did I send the poem.

The answers to me were simple but the anger, frustration and distrust that clouded her mind were too thick, her grace was taken away. The little bit of it, if I may say.

I sent the poem because I wanted to send the message. Sometimes, when what you want to express is too personal, digging for words become tedious and even antiseptic. That's where resorting to pictures or symbols or prose or colors come in. I found my medium in poetry and decided to pounce on it. I wanted her to know, just know, or at least grant her a better chance of knowing what little I can deliver. I've been in the position of being left blind-sided and it was never fun and safe to sit with shadows. It shouldn't matter says Y. But I've no bad blood with A despite what happened so it mattered to me that I can do something like leave a trail to MY reason so she can someday, when she wants to, know the thought and understand the action. Y can't get that. She didn't have any reasons to be graceful.

So she did something, an uproar that I can't tolerate blindly, and that uprooted some of the things we nurtured the past few months. I felt/feel an anger and disgrace, shame and sheer disappointment over the person she decided to become. Denial, repulsion, hatred set in and I struggle to meet with acceptance and heart.

There is the monster that slept. There is her monster.

But the villain in me taps my shoulder, whispers understanding and empathy. And maybe there is reason why I'm willing to swallow. The action may not be thought through but the reason is shining over an airless box. For all its worth, Y exploded right before my eyes. Graceful or not, I'm at a point where I'd prefer that than someone who will speak of me heartlessly then pretend to be the soul to which my weakness can recline with.

So the poem was set free, free enough to be whatever it wishes to be. I'm happy with the butter that was churned, there could be better but that better world is no longer for the same spirit that ignited the first lines of my poem. The changes are still happening, forming worlds cornered by numbered streets, and these changes are mine, mine alone. Mine to decide with whom I would share it. Mine to build, hide, protect and cover with sealed lips, cryptic words and beating pauses. That although A didn't understand what I was saying, the message was sent. I blame my failed style in depicting my feelings with words, sure, but I also blame "the reason" why she was unable to capture the song between the lines. The reason is change. 

Change has taken over everything.

The Disappearing Eve

On a sheet of passing palpability, the disappearing eve woke up an eternal uprising that moves across blurred out spaces and stains dog-eared corners of a double-crossing title, a slivered spine corroding on a mountaintop. It sashayed high and low along a current of hormonal exchanges bouncing from one wall to another igniting feral waves to detonate thoughts of hopeful swallows hung up with powder-blue skies of a pretend-summer's dream. An acquaintance forced by a lyrical goddess, and an expected wanting of dusk and movement, pointlessly judging delated tapes of broken promises, the disappearing eve vindicated a two year's worth of seclusion with a non-acidic page sealed with a crossroad letter shared over an unstable fast food table. And there was an applause, a reverberating "ahh..." secretly hovering with a mission, an unchanging image of peaceful poultry and elegantly stretched necks overlooking a falling river, almighty.

If you could keep a memory, real or imagined, what would you choose to remember?

When everything is about me.

Today I will make you shift your head to the right, direction.

I guess February is about winning and losing. About the handsome price we pay when we want something, and then some more. Of course life is about some things, some ones, and maybe a lot of some where's if we grant it some of our time. Perhaps February is about the ransom we're forced to relinquish, like a dowry or someone else's money.

For all its worth, February was cold and swiftly turned into a promise of hope, a walking muscle shirt, an idea hiding under moving paper cups, a confirmation of some sort, and then some other worlds too unreal to explain.

"My feelings are my reality"

"But that's not always correct".

"Doesn't change the fact that I feel them."

Last second randomness:
I like being in the middle to meddle and wiggle my silly ass off. What do YOU like?

Jealousy is a lesser evil.

"Are you the jealous type?"

"No."

I'm not a very jealous person. I feel, like I have exhausted majority of my jealous genes when I was a kid--over the most shallow things, like a classmate with a new doll or the one with the highest score in class. But I'm a very demanding person. My pride, though I know when to put it to rest, is very aggressive and fierce. I demand attention, affection, dedication and exclusivity. I don't share--not dessert, not my girl.

So when jealousy flickers in the background, it usually touches my billowing skirts. Then there's fire. An insulting burn that will not go away. I may even dare say, I have been insulted well enough to light up for two people.

So earlier this morning I found out that the Y continued talking/texting/flirting/tweeting the girl she kissed while we were "dating" (in her defense she said she was so drunk and so high--and yes, she lived in a world where drugs was apparently a valid excuse, which of course I worked iron hand on to correct, duh--the other defense was "we're not formally together" so she didn't think it was an issue, but if this was presented in court, then 'your honor, may I say, that the kiss happened the very night she had my initials tattooed on her skin, so if we would validate the "we're not formally together" excuse, your honor, may I request that whatever weight or meaning and value that tattoo earned, be retracted. Thank you.')

I got infuriated. The issue with that girl, who has no playlist, library or even word bank to be proud of, is older than our relationship, was rectified from the very beginning--or so I thought. So I am insulted, disgusted, not jealous cause clearly, can I please be jealous over someone more deserving of my anguish? I'm angered and distrustful.

So this is my Valentine's letter for Y. More than anything, I truly value, my peace of mind.

Dear women, I know that you're worth all the confusion, but recognize, I'm worth the security.

It's not that we're broken up but we're broken. It's not like we live together but we always separate. It's not like we're flailing but it's downhill. It's not like we're hopeless but we fail often. I want someone who wants me so much that's all there is. I don't want to settle for less so let's not be friends, not exes, not estranged, not whatever. I just want us to be good people towards each other. I can't be in this relationship right now, right.now. I want a better love where I can always just be the better person. I'm not removing myself from the picture because I think I'm a problem or because there's a problem. I'm calling it quits because I'm spent. Let's be lovers or friends or names on each other's list. I don't mind. I just want to focus what's left of my self respect to being a good person for me, you, and the people I hate. I always think it's better to kill with kindness. I'm done. You don't have to answer. I didn't ask for anything, which is a mistake I tag myself with. I'm recognizing how the mistakes we've been doing all lead to this close. I hate you. I hate Florence. I hate hate. I'm sorry it's this big. It grew and grew and I didn't ask for you to kill it when I noticed how you weren't being sensitive-anything to save us from this release. I'm sorry for that. On Friday, I want us to meet with clean plates if you still want to meet. I just want to forget, take what I can keep and start anew. I just want to move on from this incredulous turn away. Thank you for writing my name as 8th. I like that infinite number. Symbolically, it's very apt even. Two loops, one sacred point.

Are you the jealous type?

Lamming 1

Let me begin, formally if I may, for we did not begin, properly. We only rustled, witnessed lips and leaves, detach from each arm.

In a notebook, of dotted women, in dire need, of connection and form, my untrained hand, copied, your words, for safe-keeping. My selfish strategem, for remembering, this, but your soul, it came, in creeping waves.

So let me, begin endlessly, this search for tide, rather ground. My darling little mortar, a pounding goddess, my dear, locket of heavy heart.

The eye of the sky, is watching, elephants mourn, the deaths, we share, yet we blame, the trunks of trees, pushing, from each seed.

The secrets, we threw, in casual waves, were collated, by a storm, in, calculating, little squares, a graph, a line understood.

We, have no umbrella, to claim.

If I want to, I would, put a comma, to kill, ev,e,ry, fucking, pe,ri,od.

I worship--

My story usually goes like this, every single thing that she touches, physically or in essence, will be marked. So yes, I am owned upon first handshake. If she gets me a glass of water, and I drink from that glass, I am owned from the insides. Imagine if it's a 3-second embrace.

There's something completely overwhelming about the way I like a person.

Let me put it this way. If I come to a decision that I like you, you can pick your nose in front of me and I would still like you. You may annoy me down to my last patient gene and I will still like you. I try to pretend, or at least would like to believe that I pull it off, that when I decide that I like a person, I refer to a you-ness that perhaps only I can grasp. No, I don't turn people into a concept. I take the person I like first as a name, then as a concept, til I feel her as a beating muscle, and I reconcile word and flesh. I bridge with her resonating sound, wrap my thoughts with her warmth, fog my mind with her breath, put none to waste, til her last falling hair--I commit to everything. Come as you are, says that song. If I decide that I like you, I'd like you in everything that you are and are not.

It's fascinating how almost always, people who seek my acceptance are those who I'd accept (most likely, have already accepted) in every way possible. There's something completely overwhelming about the way I like a person. It's scary, and almost always, it's because I get too scared myself. So there are words, and there are songs, and there are torn pages, and endless cursors blinking through the midnight's plight. 

From Tumblr

All the cool songs and hard-to-spell words, they're yours. 

Today, tonight

Today I am stuck with the thought that the moon is an oatmeal cookie--a crossroad between sin and pleasure--convincing the most desperate that there's balance, a chance to make ends meet, indeed, tonight. A bite shall wash down dinner, a salted egg of gold, touched by dreamers who wished for cheese when they lie down and rest to pray on plastic ornaments which glows with a fake accent. Where crumbs take over the endless sky but without an intention to lead a vagabond home nor be pieces that can reform a broken justice, long-forgotten.

Tonight is an effervescence made to sting the eye with a drop of saliva as thick as the narcissism escaping a model's gap. Tonight is everything, but tonight.

Some answers 2: Affection

A friend asked, "what is light/warmth/affection?" as if I knew how to answer, and I took the responsibility of indulging as if I have answers to betroth. This friend is the becoming of scratched surface and wine, FYI. I have no idea why she would bother seek my thoughts, though if it's because my mind is hardly locked in her presence, I shall never know. She said she knew pain and tenderness, perhaps like a bruise that never heals. But I think when she said she knew longing and loss, the "little" that she comprehends about loving isn't so little at all.

I'd hate to take credit but let's say we can assume roles--assuming it's raw enough to leave settled to distant lakes that breed Loch Ness.

And by "it" I mean the subtle admission.

What is affection?
Affection is the raging confession that a person can stir words out of smoke and carbon as a magician would pull endless silk out of seemingly regular sleeves. It is the perversion of innocent gestures into roots of malice, spawning indifference towards reason. To have affection is to admit defeat, and if the Universe permits, to oddly gain everything there is for each minute to offer.

The difference between feeling and affecting is action. So affection is beats and movement. Affection is aggression.

Affection is the brevity of stolen time. It's the first five seconds of a song, the prick of a needle, the gasp of air before a dive. It's the heat of Sriracha, the friction between skin and leather, the last line of a poem.

To the brave, affection is the drawing of the sword. To the lost, it's the heirloom of forgotten bookmarks.

And after all the words bloom forcibly against a glaring page, affection is simply the silence.

That silence. That sort-of-clean table that means Something.

And weeks begin, for days roll by, so on the seventh day (or any given), affection rests and knows it is Good.

PS. This is an example of my world-known iPhoneJournalism.